DeXign the Future: Human Centered Innovation for Exponential Times

Catalog description

DEXIGN THE FUTURE: Human Centered Innovation for Exponential Times As corporations, governmental organizations, and civil associations face accelerating change in uncertain times, increasingly they are looking to designers for new ways of thinking and acting. Designers today are engaged as thought leaders, strategists, activists, and agents of change in complex socio-technical problems throughout private, public, civil and philanthropic sectors worldwide. For designers trained to shape futures defined by uncertainty and change, these exponential times represent unprecedented creative opportunities for innovation. In this course, students explore methods and tools for design in exponential times to shape uncertain futures. Students will explore the forces that drive change in the future (i.e., social, economic, political, environmental, technological), and learn to align innovation strategically with the trajectories of those forces. The design project that drives everything else is the future of mega-metropolitan regions, the hubs of innovation where 70% of people in the world and 75% of Americans will live in 2050. In the semester long project, students create scenarios for Life 2050 in Metro 3.0, using Pittsburgh as a locus and focusing on a project within urban systems such as Sustainable Production and amp; Consumption, Lifelong Learning, Human Development and Resilient Community.